Operator
Operator
Good day and welcome to KBR's Fourth Quarter and Fiscal Year 2015 Earnings Conference Call. This call is being recorded. As a reminder, your lines will be in a listen-only mode for the duration of the call. There will be a question-and-answer session immediately following prepared remarks. You will receive instructions at that time. For opening remarks and introductions, I would like to turn the call over to Mr. Zac Nagle, Vice President of Investor Relations. Please go ahead. Zachary A. Nagle - Vice President-Investor Relations & Communications: Good morning and thank you for joining us for KBR's fourth quarter and fiscal 2015 earnings conference call. Today's call is also being webcast and a replay will be available on KBR's website for seven days at kbr.com. The press release announcing KBR's results is also available on KBR's website. Joining me today are Stuart Bradie, President and Chief Executive Officer; and Brian Ferraioli, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. During today's call, Stuart and Brian will cover KBR's financial and operation results in more detail, provide an update on our progress against our strategic objectives, and discuss our market outlook. Please refer to the accompanying presentation that is posted on our website at kbr.com. After our prepared remarks, we'll open the floor for questions. Before turning the call over to Stuart, I would like to remind our audience that today's comments may include forward-looking statements reflecting KBR's views about future events and their potential impact on performance. These matters involve risks and uncertainties that could impact operations and financial results and cause our actual results to differ significantly from our forward-looking statements. These risks are discussed in KBR's fourth quarter earnings press release, KBR's earnings presentation, KBR's Form 10-K for the period ended December 31, 2015 and KBR's current reports on Form 8-K. You can find all of these documents at kbr.com. Now, I'll turn the call over to Stuart. Stuart? Stuart Bradie - President & Chief Executive Officer & Group President-Engineering & Construction: Thank you, Zac. Good morning. So, turning to slide three, just a brief introduction on where we are on our goal towards Zero Harm and our safety performance. Our Total Recordable Incident Rate for 2015 showed significant progress, over a 30% improvement, over the previous year, and we continue into 2016 towards the goal of Zero Harm. A great achievement and really everyone at KBR is very proud of where we're heading in this particular area. Moving on to slide four; our year-end summary. So, significant progress against the strategic objectives that we set out in December 2014. I'll touch in the next slide a little bit of, I guess, against our scorecard that we set out when we set out our stall. We exceeded EPS guidance through the fiscal year and Brian will talk a little bit more about that later. Good Q4, solid earnings, on a backdrop of really good execution across our core businesses. We secured the Magnolia LNG project in fourth quarter of 2015, which was good and we've announced the award of the UK's Ministry of Defense, MFTS contract in the first quarter of 2016, which slipped a quarter, and hence, we just highlighted here because we expected it in the last quarter of 2015. Our cost savings are on track. We've identified and actioned over $165 million. And we're confident we'll achieve our goal of $200 million through 2016. We continue to have good performance on our non-strategic power project delivery, again managed by our Americas E&C business and that delivered some incremental profit in the quarter. Also in the fourth quarter, we had $36 million in restructuring, impairment charges and these were partially offset by the gain on the sale of assets. This really reflects our ongoing balancing of the business portfolio. We also had $8 million of discrete tax charges in the quarter, really relating to the change in the UK tax rates against our tax credits. So, that's a one-off. We continued with a balanced capital allocation policy, and in the quarter, we returned $52 million to shareholders through dividends and buybacks and $109 million across the year. And we continue to pay a competitive yielding dividend, so no change there. We also acquired very much in line with our strategy the technology subsidiaries from Chematur in the first quarter of 2016. Okay, so, moving on to slide five. We set out our stall very clearly and transparently at the end of 2014, and this really the scorecard of which we should be measured. We said we'd exit non-strategic businesses, those that we didn't fit – think fit with our future strategy or were not performing or very low margin. And I think we've now completed all the sales that we set out to do. We closed the U.S. Minerals office. And we've had good success in closing out two of the three EPC Power projects and with one of those due for completion in the first quarter of 2017, so really good performance in this particular area. The businesses we took to review more carefully really are Industrial Services business. We concluded the transaction and we sold half that business to grow it as we brought in a partner who really understood the local markets that we were operating in, and that venture is starting to gain good traction, and we're very pleased with the progress there. We moved that Canadian Pipe Fabrication/Module Assembly business into a joint venture called EPIC where we hold a minority stake. So, again, I think both of those are very much good results during the course of the year. We set out a target of $200 million, I've talked about that just previously and $165 million identified and actioned to-date, so more to come there through 2016. Target margins we set out, Technology & Consulting, low 20s%. We achieved 23.8%. E&C, high-single digits, 9.5%, and the GS in low-teens excluding legacy costs. And that was under the target in Q4 and Brian will explain why. Again it's a one-off that will potentially resolve itself as we go forward. We put a lot of effort into resolving outstanding disputes with the U.S. Government. We're going to give you a little bit more of color around that. I think that we've – we could have done a better job in explaining that more fully in the past. And it seems to be quite a hot topic when we go around talking to potential investors and our current investors. And so, we really want to give you sort of – our sort of view as where that stands today and Brian will talk about that next. And again, we continue to employ a balanced capital allocation policy. And I think I've touched on all of them as part of the summary. And we will continue with our policy going forward. So now I'd like to hand over to Brian who will firstly give you a little bit of color, a little bit more meat on the bone around where we are on our dispute resolutions and then he'll move on to the results. Brian? Brian K. Ferraioli - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: Thank you, Stuart, and good morning. Yes. On slide six, you'll see an update on some of the major disputes that we have and trying to compare where we were at the end of 2014 to the end of 2015. And one of the areas that we had a fair amount of exposure going into 2015 was relating to the U.S. Government audits. Just with a little context, for the period 2003 to 2011, that was the height of the LogCAP III contract support of the U.S. military in Iraq. And we invoiced, over that time period, $46 billion. That's about $5.1 billion in billings per year. Coming into the year, we have three years still open subject to audit, and we closed the year at the end of 2015 with only $9 million remaining being questioned by the government. A tremendous accomplishment and we expect to get that $9 million resolved this year and, hopefully, within the next quarter or so. Other years still open; the 2012 through 2014, the billings dropped down to only $1.2 billion for that time period, so only $400 million. So, you see a significant step down in the amount of cost to be audited by the government. And I'd point out that our success rate in justifying the billings that we rendered to the government is 99.89%. So, in my view, a significant de-risking by the end of 2015 to where we entered the year relating to government audits of some very high volume activity that we've had in the past. Also coming into the beginning of the year, we had a number of sodium dichromate cases. Two series of cases in the states of Oregon and Texas. And actually, in Oregon, we had an adverse jury verdict of $81 million against us though, which was on appeal. During the year, the cases were combined and transferred to Texas, where all the cases were dismissed on the merits. And one of the findings of the court was that no one was injured. Now, the plaintiffs are appealing this, but again a significant de-risking from where we entered the year. Another ruling from the court was that the contract indemnification, including in our agreement with the U.S. military, protects us from these type of claims and costs. So again, it's not over, but a significant de-risking from where we entered the year. And finally, the PEMEX, this is an offensive claim where we've won several times in cases against PEMEX. We entered the year with a case being on appeal with $465 million being on deposit in New York by PEMEX. As we exited 2015, the hearings are complete and we continue to wait a ruling by the court. So hopefully we'll hear in the near team, and we're much closer to the end than we are to the beginning on collecting the $465 million. Tuning over to slide seven; looking at the financial results for the quarter. You see the revenues of $1.080 billion is down about $337 million from the prior year, but $207 million of that relates to the fact that we now deconsolidate the Brown & Root Industrial Services business that Stuart mentioned earlier and now comes through in the equity in earnings line. And we also sold the Building Group in the second quarter. And between those two, it's $207 million. The delta also reflects the rundown on one of the larger LNG projects in Australia that we've been talking about for some quarters now. Gross profit and equity in earnings reflects the improved performance Stuart referred to earlier, and clearly a significant change from where we were in the fourth quarter of 2014 when we went through the restructuring process. G&A costs continue to come down, it's a $25 million reduction from a year ago quarter and that's, again, the cost initiatives that we've been talking about for some time. The impairment of long-lived assets and restructuring charges continue as we rebalance our business. $17 million of those charges relate to the write-off of ERP expenses and non-cash, since the cash has been spent in last year, and the cost initiatives as well relating to severance, offset partially by some gains on the sales of excess office space and our Infrastructure Americas business. The net of the two is about a $9 million hit to the quarter. Net income obviously reflects all of the above. And just one thing to point out, the discrete tax of $8 million in the quarter, this is in relation to the UK tax rate dropping from 20% to 18%. So therefore, the tax benefits that we have, primarily related to the UK pension, will generate lower value in the future when we get to deduct them for tax purposes. But the good news is the tax rate on earnings will be lower as well. All of that results in an EPS of $0.29. Going over to page eight; page eight reflects how we think about the business. As I mentioned, the $0.29 EPS for the quarter, and that's $1.40 for the full year. But there are a number of these strategic initiatives that we've been doing throughout the year that are not really operational run rate type items, and so we tend to back those out. So specifically the non-strategic businesses, although the performance has been better than what had been expected on the power plant portfolio that we still have with $11 million gain during the quarter, which equates to about $0.08, and $27 million for the year which equates to about $0.19, clearly that's business that we're exiting. And therefore, it's not going to be resulting in the future. The impairments and restructuring charges, $36 million for the quarter equates to about $0.22 and $70 million for the year or $0.41. The gain on the disposition of assets, $27 million for the quarter, $0.16 per share for the quarter and $61 million for the year, which is about $0.40 for the year. And then if you recall, in the second quarter, we had a gain, we had a correction of an error that was over a number of years relating to a joint venture that we have in Mexico, and that was about $0.10, and then the tax rate change in the UK, $0.06. So you look at the adjusted EPS after backing out these, what I consider, non-operational type activities, you're at $0.33 for the quarter, $1.18 for the year. And then we continue with the U.S. legacy legal fees, which were $5 million for the quarter or $0.03 and $18 million for the year or about $0.12. So when we think about EPS, we think about $0.36 for the quarter and about $1.30 for the year. Moving over to slide nine, a little bit more detail on the P&L. We're looking at it from a segment perspective. You see the Technology & Consulting group, the revenues are up. That's largely related to increased volumes of proprietary equipment. E&C, we talked about the deconsolidation of the Industrial Services group as well as the LNG project. And also in there in 2014, we had the Canadian pipe fabrication work and Canadian construction which has – the pipe fabrication has been transferred to a joint venture and the construction in Canada has dropped off a little bit, reflecting tar sands or oil sands activities. Government Services is higher in revenues and that's largely related to the support for the U.S. military abroad under the LogCAP IV contract. And the non-strategics reflect the sale of the Building Group, which was $81 million in the fourth quarter of 2014, that business was sold, again, in the second quarter. Gross profit and equity earnings are up across the board compared to the prior year, obviously, with all the restructuring charges from the fourth quarter of 2014. But again, reflects good performance in T&C on the proprietary equipment side, especially we're talking about the technology component of it, not so much the consulting side. E&C had strong performance during the quarter. The Government Services improved from where we were a year ago. But the margins are down a bit for the quarter. And this reflects the fact that one of the project close-outs, we received some subcontractor claims very recently actually after the year-end, but before we filed, so they're included in the fourth quarter results. We believe there may be some merit to them, but we haven't had the opportunity to fully evaluate whether these are recoverable from our client. So, we have the cost in there and zero revenues. And that's why the quarter margins are down a bit. If we are able to recover from the government, we only upside relating to those claims. The non-strategic business, again reflects the power projects, and the EBITDA again is reflective of all the above, plus the fact that the change from the year-ago was all the goodwill impairment that we had taken. Moving on to slide 10; we had a good cash of quarter. Cash balance at the end of the year was $883 million and that's been driven primarily from $132 million of operating cash flow during the quarter. That's the good news. The bad news is, we were successful in advancing some of that from 2016, so it's timing. So, the first quarter will be negatively impacted by that shift out of the first quarter and into the fourth quarter. During the first quarter, we have already spent $24 million to acquire three subsidiaries of Chematur. This is in line with our strategic initiative to add to our technology portfolio. And we're looking to add on with additional bolt-on acquisitions throughout the year. So, our balance sheet is strong and we believe that that's very important to our clients, but also gives us optionality as things develop in some challenging markets. We intend to continue with balanced capital allocation strategy. And as Stuart mentioned, we pay a very competitive yielding dividend of about 2.5%. During the quarter, we returned $52 million to shareholders, $40 million in repurchases and $12 million in dividends. And you see for the year, $109 million was returned to shareholders and since the spin back in 2007, just under $1.1 billion have been returned to shareholders. So with that, I'll turn the call back over to Stuart, and he'll walk you through the market outlook. Stuart Bradie - President & Chief Executive Officer & Group President-Engineering & Construction: Thank you, Brian. Global hydrocarbons, it's a tough market today. I think it will remain a tough market for E&Cs. I don't think there's any getting away from that. I think prudent cost management is essential and I think we've demonstrated good performance in that area, which needs to continue, but opportunities do remain. There's ongoing demand, particularly in the downstream refining petrochemicals arena, which really supports where we're positioned in our technology business. We're very gas-facing. And it sort of expands the opportunities for E&C pull-through from our early positioning in technology. It's worth mentioning here, two opportunities that we've called out before. The first is really around the fertilizer EPC opportunity that we declared in the Midwest of the country. In the last update, I think, I explained there were a number of those opportunities that we were pursuing. They are all developer-led and we've got those still continuing at various levels of maturity. There was a declaration recently around Midwest fertilizers and, I think, because we had talked about a fertilizer plant in the Midwest, everyone thought that was the only one we were considering, and that is not the case. In terms of Tangguh, the Tangguh pricing is in. The two competitors submitted bids and we bid it as aggressively as we feel is sensible. And as I've reiterated many times, we are not going to do anything stupid in this market, particularly in lump-sum bidding. But we await the final results of that tender, which we expect very soon. We continue to see isolated opportunities in upstream oil and gas and, I think, those will continue through 2016 and into 2017. The key there is to be chasing the ones that will go ahead. Lower CapEx around the world should result in greater opportunities as people concentrate on their existing assets for our maintenance and turnaround business. I think where we're positioning our Brown & Root Industrial Services model gives us a really good opportunity to replicate that model. Expand it in the U.S., but also replicate it across the world. And as Brian mentioned, we're very keen on continuing to expand our technology portfolio. In the Government Services side of the business, very, very different picture. The markets across the globe are expanding for us. We see an increase in U.S. military overseas support for obvious reasons, with significant strategic opportunities in the UK and across Europe. There's been a sort of declared 2% of GDP spend in the UK and Australia, which is seeing an increase in the spending in that market where we're well positioned. And we see increasing opportunities to support in the Middle East as things progress there. In summary, in 2016 and beyond, we see opportunities for stronger technology sales growth in that business and annuity revenue streams across KBR providing more continuity and cyclical protection and that's certainly the case in 2016 and we see that continuing. Our balance sheet, as Brian said, we have very strong cash performance. Our balance sheet is strong. It provides significant optionality and allows us to move quickly as strategic opportunities arise and I'm sure there will be a number of those that come to the floor during these difficult times through 2016 and into 2017. So to try and set out our scorecard and our stall for 2016, if you move to the next slide, slide 13. And the first bullet, we've set out the margin objectives and we are standing by them and we'll progress through each quarter as we go along against those margin objectives. And we stick by our $200 million cost reduction target that we established in December 2014 and will continue down that path through 2016 and into – and hopefully more into 2017. We do want to expand our Brown & Root Industrial Service model in the U.S., but actually globally as well, as we see good opportunity in the asset services side of the business. I've talked – we've talked for many quarters about Brown & Root technology portfolio, which we've started to do because it's a good business in its own right, the margins are attractive, but it does position us early for opportunities in EPC pull-through. We wish to expand our Government Services offerings, particularly around areas where it differentiates us going forward. And as I've said, the markets in that particular business are growing today. And we will continue with our balanced capital allocation strategy. So, moving on to slide 14, 2016 guidance. Our guidance is an EPS range of $1.20 to $1.45, excluding legacy legal fees, estimated in 2016 at $50 million or $0.11 EPS. It's worth noting also that approximately 80% of revenue supporting this guidance is already in backlog. Now to try and get ahead a little bit of I'm sure some questions around 2017, I thought it might be worth just making a few statements around that before we open the floor to the questions. First and foremost, we are very conscious that whatever we say we really want to stand behind. So, we're right up front. We're not going to give formal guidance for 2017. However, the 2016 growth in our Technology and our Government Services businesses has helped counteract the headwinds in our E&C business. And we see this continuing into 2017 and beyond. And our strategic intent, as we set out, supports this. In the hydrocarbon sector, as you're all well aware, our customers are limiting capital expenditure and 2017 is heading to be a tougher year than 2016. That said, our scale and our position opposite gas monetization, particularly in downstream and petrochemicals and our technology positioning really helps us. Our balance sheet gives us great optionality. We are looking acquisitively, as you're aware, and we think there will be – there are and there will continue to be opportunities that align with our strategy going forward, really around expanding the technology portfolio, and thus giving great opportunity for EPC pull-through, where it makes sense, globalizing the Brown & Root Industrial Services model around maintenance and turnaround, and really growing our Government Services offering around differentiation. And finally, the other lever you can pull in a market like this is, of course, the cost lever. I think we've demonstrated since the beginning of 2015 through the course of the year and with our targets of $200 million cost reduction, that we're performing well in this area. We believe there's more to go. We can continue to get more efficient and this will continue in 2016 and into 2017. And this really helps us competitively, but also helps us achieve declared target margins. So, with that I'll hand over to Zac. Zachary A. Nagle - Vice President-Investor Relations & Communications: Operator, at this time we'd like to open the floor for questions.